Rt Hon. Michael Heseltine CH PC
(1933-present)

Aged 91

Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, CH, PC (/ˈhɛzəltaɪn/; born 21 March 1933) is a British politician and businessman. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket. Heseltine served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001, and was a prominent figure in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and served as Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State under Major. Heseltine entered the Cabinet in 1979 as Secretary of State for the Environment, where he promoted the "Right to Buy" campaign that allowed two million families to purchase their council houses. He was considered an adept media performer and a charismatic minister, although he was frequently at odds with Thatcher on economic issues. He was one of the most visible "wets", whose "One Nation" views were epitomised by his support for the regeneration of Liverpool in the early 1980s when it was facing economic collapse; this later earned him the award of Freeman of the City of Liverpool in 2012. As Secretary of State for Defence from 1983 to 1986, he was instrumental in the political battle against the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland Affair and returned to the back benches. Heseltine became a vocal critic of Thatcher, mostly because of her Eurosceptic views and confrontational approach in Parliament. Following Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech in November 1990, Heseltine challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party, polling well enough to deny her an outright victory on the first ballot. Following Thatcher's subsequent resignation, Heseltine then lost to John Major on the second ballot, but returned to the Cabinet when Major became Prime Minister. As a key ally of Major, Heseltine rose to become President of the Board of Trade and, from 1995, Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State. He declined to seek the leadership of the party following Major's 1997 election defeat, but remained a vocal advocate for modernisation in the party. In May 2019, Heseltine had the whip suspended after saying he would vote for the Liberal Democrats, rather than the Conservatives, at the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.

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